For years individuals have been disrupted by unwanted or untimely communications. For example, an employee focused on important work can be interrupted by an unwanted telephone call. Similarly, individuals at home can be disturbed by telephone calls. In another example, an employee working at a computer terminal in the office to complete a task with an imminent deadline can be interrupted with invitations for chat or other forms of instant messaging. In any of these cases, the individual can respond to the incoming communication only to discover that the communication is of low importance. Alternatively, the individual can ignore the communication and risk missing a communication that relates to an important client, an important event or an emergency.
Caller identification (ID) equipment, including caller ID enabled phones, has become prevalent in recent years. Caller ID generally alerts the recipient of a phone call to the phone number of the caller. In some instances, caller ID equipment provides the name of the caller registered or otherwise associated with the caller's number. Thus the recipient can make an informed decision as to whether to answer the incoming call.
Caller ID information is generally limited to the telephone number of the originating phone (i.e., the phone placing the call) and an associated name. Because the originating phone may be available to more than one user, the recipient of the phone call does not necessarily know who is placing the call. In other instances, simply knowing the number and the name of the caller may not be sufficient to determine whether to respond or how to respond to the call. For example, a business person engaged in an important task may not want to respond to a call unless it is from an important customer. In another example, a business person may want to have ready access to detailed information about a caller to better interact with the caller, especially if the caller is an important customer or a potential customer. Moreover, these problems extend to other forms of communications, such as online communications, in which only limited information about an originating device is available at a receiving device.